Pope Francis was known for his sincere and genuine nature.

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, he likely adopted the name Francis for several reasons. Many scholars have suggested he got the idea from St. Francis of Assisi, who forfeited the comforts of wealth and privilege, distanced himself from any attachments, and dedicated his life to loving and caring for others.

Throughout his years as pope, Francis, who died on April 21, 2025, at age 88, focused on the dignity of human beings, especially those whom others viewed as outsiders on the margins of society  —  whether migrants, prisoners (whom he routinely visited), or LGBTQIA+ people.

“Who am I to judge?” he famously said when asked about his attitude toward gay men and women, comments that differed sharply from those of his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, who once described homosexuality as a tendency “ordered towards an intrinsic moral evil.” Such acute attention focused on outsiders was likely due to Francis’s own personal trajectory. He grew up in Argentina, several thousand miles from the Vatican. He was the child of migrants who arrived in Buenos Aires in 1929, looking for a new beginning after closing the door on life in rural Italy.

There is little doubt that such circumstances, coupled with the Gospels, were pivotal in shaping the late pope’s thinking. He emerged as one of the most effective communicators of Christian faith, loquaciously expressing himself while attending his general audiences in St. Peter’s Square. He would finish reciting the Angelus prayer there every Sunday with a buon pranzo  — “have a good lunch.” He rejected the Apostolic Palace for a plain room in the Casa Santa Marta, a residence that bishops and cardinals used when visiting Rome.

Francis also made himself a pope of the Global South by speaking out forcefully on health, poverty, climate change, and migration. In his 2015 encyclical, Laudato Si’, Francis elevated climate and environmental protection to the same level as social justice in the Vatican’s doctrine. During the COVID-19 pandemic, his iconic address in a barren St. Peter’s Square will remain forever deeply etched in the hearts, souls, and minds of hundreds of millions of viewers who witnessed the spectacle. Such an atypical style formed a crucial part of his legacy.

When the cardinals gathered in Rome to vote for Benedict XVI’s successor after his abrupt resignation in 2013, they wanted a reformer who could shake up the dreadful management of the church’s finances. Francis replaced the previous group of cardinal overseers and installed his own team of clerics and lay experts after revelations of mismanagement of the Vatican’s own finances.

As with his less than definitive dismissal of LGBTQI+ rights, Francis attracted conservative Catholics’ fierce ire because of his decision to urge parish priests to decide on individual cases whether divorced Catholics who remarried should receive communion. After this, his fiercest opponents published an unprecedented document  —  a dubia, or expression of doubt — about his teachings. Liberals were frustrated, too, particularly by his refusal to support women in becoming priests and failing to endorse same-sex marriage. Nonetheless, he appointed several women, the vast majority of them being nuns, to key Vatican positions that only men previously occupied. Such a move marked a huge change, as did his recent synods that granted lay participants at such gatherings  —  the representatives of ordinary Catholics in the pews  —  duplicative discussion and voting rights with bishops and cardinals.

Pope Francis never fit comfortably into political binaries. He never engaged in clever publicity stunts for good optics. He said, “Who am I to judge?” not to indicate diplomatic neutrality or a cop-out but as a spiritual gut-check to a church that too often mistakes rules for self-righteous gospel. He launched the synod not as a bureaucratic reshuffling but as the power of the Holy Spirit to communicate through everyone. He engaged in deep prayer about all of this and created the space to turn such activism into action.

For generations, progressive Catholics bemoaned what they perceived as the papacy’s excessive power, it monarchical authority in a supposedly democratic age, and the way the concept of papal doctrine restricted Catholic debates. In theory at least, Pope Francis shared similar concerns, promising a more collegial and transparent church. In practice he often exercised his power in the same manner as his predecessors did to monitor and short-circuit acts of defiance to his authority. However, during his tenure, such targets were reactionary conservatives and staunch traditionalists as opposed to progressives and modernizers.

Pope Francis left huge shoes for the church to fill. The question is whether his successor will be able to rise to the occasion and continue his renaissance legacy. Time will indeed tell.

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Copyright 2025 Elwood Watson, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate

Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.